I was at a customer this week (sorry, can't share who). I spent the day talking about Redgate Monitor and how it can help with query tuning, server management, and estate management. Through the day, the data pros at the company were sharing how they were managing hundreds of servers and several thousand databases.

They were good.

No, scratch that. They were pretty great. These people had a thorough and deep knowledge of their systems, how they worked, and what was needed to keep the whole thing up and running. Sure, I contributed a little to their knowledge, but they were already great at their jobs. Oddly, and this isn't meant to be a criticism, just an observation, they were just almost apologetic about how good they were. It felt a little weird. Cause let's be clear, if I was doing as good a job as these people were, I'd be standing on my desk crowing about it pretty much non-stop.

I think you should too.

What we do isn't easy. In fact, it can be pretty darned hard. When you've been in fire fighting mode for a while, just dealt with major outages, or had a few rough deployments, it can feel like your best bet is to hide in a corner and hope no one notices you're there. Instead, stand up. Square your shoulders. Share your accomplishments with the company. Scream about it. Let them know you're busting your behind for the organization. Don't be humble. Brag. There 100% is a time and place for humility, especially in inter-personal conversations. However, when it comes to broad talks to your company, not individuals, shout your success. Let them know what you and your team are accomplishing. They need to hear it. Let's also be honest about it, you could use that bit of ego boost too. Nothing wrong with that, especially when you are in fact doing a good job.

Still gotta own your mistakes, but we don't have to be loud about those. Just clear & honest.

Thump your chest and shout, "We did good. Our team rocks. Look at our accomplishments!"